Courageous
by Icee Suicune
Summary: She wasn't a little flower waiting to get stepped on. She was an entire rose bush. Painful if you messed with it, but also surprisingly easy on the eyes. Yosuke/Chie


Yosuke used to be pretty wimpy.

Okay, so maybe he still was. Only a little bit, though. After all, he had gotten a lot better after his encounter with his shadow. It took a lot of guts to admit that...thing was a part of him, and he felt stronger for doing so.

He could take on the shadows in the TV world just fine. He survived encounters with Mystery Food X. Hell, he even crossed paths with a serial killer, no problem! Actually, he'd admit he was nervous then, too. Only a little bit.

His time with the Investigation Team pushed his courage to the max. Nothing scared him too bad now. Even if it did, he knew he had friends he could fall back on.

Yeah, Yosuke Hanamura was a courageous monster. There was nothing he couldn't take on.

If that was the case, then ,why couldn't he work up the courage to talk to one dumb, bowl-cut green-clad girl?

Things were much easier when Yosuke didn't even think of Chie as a girl at all. Before they really became friends, she was just someone to borrow movies from. On occasion they'd discuss them. Soon after Yu came along, she became an ally. A stranger turned ally, soon an ally turned friend.

He didn't feel flustered around Yukiko anymore, and Rise didn't make his stomach do flips like she used to. What was it about Chie that made Yosuke so... so scared?

Maybe it was her deadly kicks that could easily break his back if she tried. Maybe it was her sharp tongue, or the way she'd insult him without a second thought. Maybe it was because she held his affections now, and last time he liked a girl...

But Chie was different. She was tough and capable, and she's saved her own ass in battle almost as many times as she's saved his. She was downright scary in battle, so Yosuke shouldn't have had worried about her as much as he did. She wasn't a little flower waiting to get stepped on. She was an entire rose bush. Painful if you messed with it, but also surprisingly easy on the eyes.

Chie wasn't just a scary, brutal fighter. She had her sweet moments. She wasn't always annoyed with his late-night phone calls; some-times she'd crak her own lame jokes, and they'd kill half a night that way. She had that weird maternal side that showed up every so often, like when Yosuke got knocked down even harder than usual. Chie would pull him off the ground, ruffle his hair, give him a concerned look, all that kind of stuff. She listened to him complain about Saki in the beginning, and in turn she opened up to him about her insecurities with her tomboyish nature.

Even little things were captivating. Her laugh was cuter than anything Yukiko could manage. She could see right through his cool guy act, but she never teased him _that_ badly over it. She visited him at Junes just often enough to save him from the torture of Teddie and an entire world of boredom. The sweet side of Chie scared him far more than anything she had ever done to an enemy. That side of her captured him, pulling him in deeper than he had ever intended.

Chie was terrifying, no way around it. Although not all of that terror was necessarily a bad thing. It struck the kind of fear that kept Yosuke up at night, running scenarios in his head, with them ending in a critical hit to the nads more often than not. It made him question all the confidence he thought he gained that one fateful school year. It drove him to write a stupid love note instead of actually talking about his feelings.

Yes, Chie Satonaka was a scary girl, who managed to make the great Yosuke Hanamura shake with fear in front of her locker.

One day he'd gain the courage to talk to her about this. Maybe that day would be as soon as tomorrow. Yosuke shoved the envelope through the locker's vent shaft and quickly ran away.

Sometimes, their world was way more terrifying than anything in the TV. Chie proved to be the perfect reminder of that. But if everything was tame, life would get ridiculously boring ridiculously fast. Maybe living in a certain kind of fear did a person good.

Today Yosuke's courage failed him for the first time in a very, very long time. He glanced behind him and lo and behold, Chie was in the process of opening her locker. He picked up his pace and hurried out the front doors.

When it came to Chie, maybe a little fear wasn't so bad after all.

-.-.-

 _ **AN:**_

 _ **So I suppose you could consider this a prequel to 'Graduation Gift' in a way. I don't know. I wrote this a while ago and forgot I had it so I typed it up today!**_

 _ **I really really love yosuchie... so much...**_

 _ **Enjoy!**_

 _ **Icee Suicune**_


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